2016-12-07T20:04:41ZThe impact of South African automotive policy changes on the domestic leather industryhttp://hdl.handle.net/10500/21822
The impact of South African automotive policy changes on the domestic leather industry
Khan, Faizal
The South African leather industry has undergone a significant transformation since
the 1990’s and this can be attributed primarily owing to two major factors that
occurred. The first being trade liberalisation, which meant the fall of trade barriers,
and the second being the Motor Industry Development Programme (MIDP), which
was implemented in South Africa on 1 September 1995. The MIDP was implemented
in the context of the country’s political and economic liberalisation, and the major
structural shift in government policy and the trade regime.
South Africa became much more globally integrated and the South African leather
industry benefited because of this, as well as the incentives that was offered under
the MIDP. Automotive exports of stitched leather seat parts responded positively to
the incentives offered under the MIDP and stitched leather seat parts, as a
component under the MIDP, became one of the best performing components being
exported from South Africa.
The MIDP had been terminated at the end of 2012 and is now being followed by
government’s latest rendition of automotive policy, namely the Automotive
Production and Development Programme (APDP). The APDP focuses on value
addition, which pursues beneficiation of the country’s raw materials to the final
stages, to ensure maximum benefit to the South African economy. The findings of
the study entail that the South African leather industry is now in a vulnerable state
because of the new automotive policy. This is mainly because the APDP does not
provide the same level, or type, of incentives that the MIDP had provided to the
industry.
2015-11-01T00:00:00ZDevelopment of an intelligent analytics-based model for product sales optimisation in retail enterpriseshttp://hdl.handle.net/10500/21807
Development of an intelligent analytics-based model for product sales optimisation in retail enterprises
Matobobo, Courage
A retail enterprise is a business organisation that sells goods or services directly to consumers for personal use. Retail enterprises such as supermarkets enable customers to go around the shop picking items from the shelves and placing them into their baskets. The basket of each customer is captured into transactional systems. In this research study, retail enterprises were classified into two main categories: centralised and distributed retail enterprises. A distributed retail enterprise is one that issues the decision rights to the branches or groups nearest to the data collection, while in centralised retail enterprises the decision rights of the branches are concentrated in a single authority. It is difficult for retail enterprises to ascertain customer preferences by merely observing transactions. This has led to quantifiable losses. Although some enterprises implemented classical business models to address these challenging issues, they still lacked analytics-based marketing programs to gain competitive advantage. This research study develops an intelligent analytics-based (ARANN) model for both distributed and centralised retail enterprises in the cross-demographics of a developing country. The ARANN model is built on association rules (AR), complemented by artificial neural networks (ANN) to strengthen the results of these two individual models. The ARANN model was tested using real-life and publicly available transactional datasets for the generation of product arrangement sets. In centralised retail enterprises, the data from different branches was integrated and pre-processed to remove data impurities. The cleaned data was then fed into the ARANN model. On the other hand, in distributed retail enterprises data was collected branch per branch and cleaned. The cleaned data was fed into the ARANN model. According to experimental analytics, the ARANN model can generate improved product arrangement sets, thereby improving the confidence of retail enterprise decision-makers in competitive environments. It was also observed that the ARANN model performed faster in distributed than in centralised retail enterprises. This research is beneficial for sustainable businesses and consideration of the results is therefore recommended to retail enterprises.
2016-07-01T00:00:00ZThe amalgamation of traditional African values and liberal democratic values in South Africa : implications for conceptions of educationhttp://hdl.handle.net/10500/21805
The amalgamation of traditional African values and liberal democratic values in South Africa : implications for conceptions of education
Letseka, Moeketsi
This study investigated the seemingly conflicting and incompatible ideological positions that post-apartheid South Africa appears to straddle. On the one hand, South Africa is an aspiring liberal democracy courtesy of its constitution of 1996, which is liberal in that it enshrines a wide range of rights and freedoms for the individual. On the other hand, the same constitution recognises the institution of traditional leadership, whose claim to power is hereditary and not by popular vote. Thus the study established that South Africa is an aspiring liberal democracy that is also heavily steeped in African traditions and cultures. It offered a rebuttal of the view that existence and recognition of traditional institutions of politics and governance in a liberal democracy is a fundamental contradiction. Drawing on the literature the study showed that liberal democracies such as Japan, the United Kingdom (UK), Belgium, The Netherlands and Spain, have had monarchies from time immemorial. But their monarchies are not a hindrance to either liberalism or liberal democracy. The study underscored the importance of Ubuntu as a socio-cultural discourse in South Africa, more so given that South Africa is an African country whose population is 80 per cent African. Concomitantly the study proposed a philosophy of education that amalgamates some aspects of liberal education with some aspects of African traditional education. Aspects of liberal education that were found to pertain to the amalgamation are ‘cultivating humanity’ and ‘narrative imagination’, while aspects of African traditional education are the values and principles implicit in Ubuntu, the latter understood as a humane normative concept. At a practical classroom level the study proposed that such an amalgamated philosophy of education would be attained through storytelling and the teaching of history through chronology and causation. As a form of ‘narrative’, storytelling reveals the finite in its fragile uniqueness and illustrates how the past influences and shapes the present, and how the present determines aspects of the past that are useful and meaningful today. Similarly the teaching of history through chronology and causation enables the students to organise their historical thought processes and construct their own probable historical narratives. The teaching of history through chronology and causation therefore offers the students multiple opportunities to gain a better understanding of historical events, and lessons that can be learn from such events.
2016-01-01T00:00:00ZThe influence of using a scientific calculator in learning fractions : a case study of one school in Gauteng Provincehttp://hdl.handle.net/10500/21804
The influence of using a scientific calculator in learning fractions : a case study of one school in Gauteng Province
Mutsvangwa, Sekesai Bridget
The main purpose of the research was to investigate the influence of scientific calculators on Grade 8 South African learner's understanding of fractions in learning mathematics. Quasi-experimental quantitative research methods were used. A sampling frame was selected using non probability sampling technique. A total of 15 learners in each group were randomly selected for an experimental and control group for the study. Both groups were taught fraction concepts by different teachers for the same duration and at the same time. The experimental group used a calculator as a learning aid while the control group used the traditional paper pencil method. Two tasks (post-test and assignment) were administered to both groups and a questionnaire to the experimental group. The results indicated that the scientific calculator has a positive influence in learner's conceptual understanding of fractions in mathematics as reflected in their performance.
2016-01-01T00:00:00Z